Ankit Panda

And so that is, again, not the direction we're heading into.

But politically, there, I think, is a big fixation in the United States on bringing both Russia and China into a singular negotiating process, even if that has a low probability of success, in my opinion.

Iran, of course, has not yet crossed the key decision point to build a nuclear weapon.

They are the world's closest non-nuclear country to procuring the bomb.

And the attacks that took place last year did not have the effect of completely destroying their program.

They do appear to have set things back.

by a little bit.

But the Iranians still have many of the key ingredients, to which I'll just point out, you know, they are sitting still on about 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium that is not being verified by international inspectors, which, by the way, was being verified before the attacks took place.

And they still have the capability and capacity to

reconstitute their program.

So this is still a big problem.

And as you indicated, there are new talks underway, but we're very much back in a place where I don't think the United States and Iran are closer to making a breakthrough on many of the key issues that have held up talks, particularly under the first and second Trump administration.

Right.

Questions like will the Iranians have any right to enrich uranium on their own territory?

They've really made this a sort of non-negotiable issue in the past because they claim it is their right and

And they're right about that.

There is no actual prohibition on enrichment.

It's just that in the case of Iran, knowing what they've done in the past, knowing their potential interest in nuclear weapons, the United States is concerned about the levels to which they enrich, about the places in which they enrich.

But this issue does seem to be now a major obstacle.

And then there's the other issue of how will we get international inspectors back?